THE WAR MUSEUM'S GREAT MISTAKE

The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa has decided to "adjust" its
plaque about Bomber Command during the Second World War in response
to veterans' complaints. This is a great mistake. The offending
plaque says the following: "The value and morality of the strategic
bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber
Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to
surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations.
Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans
dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only
small reductions of German war production until late in the war."

The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa has decided to "adjust" its plaque about Bomber Command during the Second World War in response to veterans' complaints. This is a great mistake. The offending plaque says the following: "The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions of German war production until late in the war."

If we are to believe Canada's National Council of Veterans Associations, these sentences are offensive and inaccurate. They are offensive because they accuse veterans of committing "war crimes" or "war atrocities" and they are inaccurate because, to quote Cliff Chadderton, the chairman of the Council, they "[go] against all of the books that have been written on Bomber Command."

Either Mr. Chadderton has not read those books, or he has read them very badly.

The statements on the plaque are supported by the official British, American and Canadian histories, by all serious studies of Bomber Command, including those sympathetic to its accomplishments, and by Canada's most esteemed historians -- Desmond Morton, Margaret MacMillan, Jack Granatstein. Arthur Harris, the Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, defined Bomber Command's goal as: "[T]he destruction of German cities; the killing of German workers; and the disruption of civilized life throughout Germany. It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale; and the breakdown of morale ? are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit factories."

A basic part of this strategy was the killing of civilians. It was one that Harris himself relished. In his words, "What we want to do ? is to bring the masonry crashing down on top of the Boche, to kill Boche and to terrify the Boche."

The numbers are also not in dispute. Official statistics put civilian deaths at 593,000. Civilians were burned, boiled, crushed, drowned and asphyxiated. Most died cowering in cellars, and most were women, children or old men. Some 60 German cities -- Dresden, but also Frankfurt, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Hannover, Darmstadt, Pforzheim and many, many others -- were obliterated. Nonetheless, German war production increased year on year until the autumn of 1944, after which it fell rapidly (when Germany was beginning to implode, making it hard to quantify bombing's contribution).

In short, all of the statements made in the museum's plaque are accepted historical fact. Given this, the veterans can have only two objections: they do not like the conclusions or the conclusions do not say enough. As the former is absurd, it has to be the latter. Specifically, the veterans believe that more needs to be said about how bombing contributed to the end of the war. In the words used in their suggested revision, bombing (a) "bled off resources from the enemy's campaign against the Soviets" [fighters over Berlin weren't over Stalingrad], "involving massive amounts of manpower and material diverted from their primary combat commitments" and (b) destroyed "the enemy defences, oil resources and transportation networks."

Here the veterans have a point. These effects did weaken Germany (though it is hard to know by how much). The first point is, however, terribly exaggerated, because the resources that the Allies used to bomb Germany were also "bled off" from other fronts (bombers over Berlin weren't in the Battle of the Atlantic), meaning that resource transfers cancelled each other out. Point (b) is true. The problem is that this bombing mostly wasn't British and Canadian: it was rather American. Throughout the war, some 46% of all Bomber Command bombs were dropped directly on the centre of German cities. Harris wanted the figure to be much higher. By contrast, only 6% of American bombs fell on cities. During 1945, at the peak of the bombing war, the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped 50% of its bombs on transportation targets; the figure for the RAF was 13%. The result for civilians was clear: Bomber Command killed three German civilians for every one killed by the Eighth. The Canadian War Museum, therefore, can legitimately highlight the bombing's accomplishments (indeed, on another plaque, it already does). But if the museum wishes to retain a shred of historical integrity it will also have to emphasize that those accomplishments were largely American; that the role played by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian Air Force was minor; and that the part it did play was bitterly resisted by Arthur Harris, who only wanted to destroy cities. As Albert Speer (I have the document on file) said, "the American attacks ? were by far the most dangerous. It was in fact these attacks which caused the breakdown of the German armaments industry." Is this really what the veterans want?

So much for substance. The process followed over the last year has been at best unfortunate, at worst farcical. At first, museum officials insist that the plaque is accurate; that they will not make changes; and that to make changes would be caving to pressure. Then, an ill-advised Senate intervention adds, intentionally or not, wind to the veterans' sails. Finally, the museum executes a volte-face, which, by its own standard, can only be understood as caving to pressure. Since then, the veterans, who are not historians, have appointed themselves judge and jury in a matter over which they have a vested and highly emotional interest -- as Chadderton put it, "We'll look at [the new plaque] and decide whether it's fair. If it is, then we'll accept it." This outcome is more than regrettable. It is a national embarrassment.

-Randall Hansen is associate professor and Canada research chair at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Fire and Fury: the Allied Bombing of Germany.

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